I have always enjoyed holding in contempt people who read People. The magazine. It has always seemed a bit silly to me that instead of worrying about things that make a difference in their lives, people spend time following the lives of celebrities who are so far removed from their reality that they might as well be fiction.

I have for years, when the topics of movies and movie stars comes up, been lost when people start tossing around names of actors. The same with musicians. I just didn't understand how they could literally devote hours every day to following this stuff. It seemed silly to me, and I have taken every opportunity to tell them so.

Today I was listening to Brad Wardell on Power User TV talk about John Carmack 'rapping' with gamers. It occurred to me that Carmack, id Software co-founder is as much a celebrity in certain communities as J-Lo is in others. Normal people talk about movie stars. Geeks talk about "Geek Stars". These would include John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates (who we all love to hate, but still all talk about), even our own beloved Brad Wardell is achieving this status. Even to extend the comparison into Hollywood, what geek hasn't ever visited http://www.wilwheaton.net/? There's nothing about these guys that affects our lives. The software their companies produce is like the movies Hollywood produces - completely self-contained in that when we have the software, it serves its purpose without its creators ever having to know who we are or what we get out of it personally. The lives and politics of "Geek Stars" have no bearing on MY life, yet I still read the blogs, the news sites, and more. I know that Bill Gates has a huge mansion, Linus Torvalds worked at TransMeta, that Brad Wardell was an unwilling convert from OS/2 (as I am myself), and John Carmack likes to shoot the breeze with his fans.

The only difference between me and the Hollywood Herds, is who my celebrities are. I'm not sure what this says about me.